Being Enough yet Developing
a paradox within time
Start exactly where you are. There’s really no other place to start. Well, you could start somewhere else, like over there; or you could just start wherever you are.
Some days I look wildly different than I did the day before. Some days I feel wildly different than I did the day before.
Today, I have a headache, which I think is related to detoxing.
I’m still working on myself; I’m not yet finished.
I try to not blame myself for needing to heal. I try not to call myself entitled or call myself names like spoiled…as if the conditions in which one is born are blameworthy1.
With so many people pointing fingers and casting blame, I, too, could pile my sins high as a mountain with every energy bar wrapper or tin can discarded; yet to find a blameless man is to find one who is finished. And I am not yet finished, but to shame myself for taking time to improve is to misplace my anger and shoot an arrow at my own heart.
I’m not so sure that acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. I tried to accept someone as she is without expressing my feelings, and I ended up feeling resentful. People can develop and grow, and if I just try and accept them for who they are without saying anything, I am bypassing an opportunity for vulnerability and growth. In this way, I am not yet complete.
Complete and enough are two different forms of measurement. Completeness is about finishing a project. Enoughness is about having the necessary resources. I am enough insofar as the Gods have provided me with all that I need to accomplish the task that needs completing. I am the universe and a universe unto myself; in this way, I lack nothing that I need and am, therefore, sufficient. In this way, I am enough. But just because I am enough does not mean I am finished; I know this because my consciousness currently exists within materiality and therefore time, the progression of which implies becoming, a continuation, a process. This becoming is different than the state of being, which is already enough. I am both of these things: becoming (developing) and being (sufficient).
I am both enough and still developing. Just because I am developing does not mean that I am not enough. Just because I am enough does not mean I am perfect except insofar as perfection is only known in relation to imperfection. This is the paradox in which I am and will be. ✡
I also was, and what I was is the foundation upon which I am established. But even my perception of the past is not complete because as time keeps unfolding, my experiences wait for me to mine wisdom out of them, like how diamonds are formed.
This is another way in which I am enough but not yet finished. If I am stuck in my current understanding of things, I become stagnant like a pool of water; but if I remove the pride that blocks me off from the flow, then I become one again with the river. Only then can the knowledge of God can once again flow through me. It’s really not a moral quandary. The state of becoming is really not about ethics; it’s about becoming one with the flow, which is, itself, sufficient.
“They exist in this plan:
The tiller-rope is in their arm,
And it is at the foot of the Developing One.
He is returning to the hall which is of the Akhet:
They must free this tiller-tope
From the god (when he is) at the Akhet.”
- from The Book of Gates translated by Michael Sheppard, with text by Josephine McCarthy and illustrations by Stuart Littlejohn
Awareness can be tricky this way, which might be why the Creator God was trying to protect Eve from knowledge, but she couldn’t hide from her true nature. One ought not be ashamed of awareness although it is a heavy cross to bear and is best born with compassion, which we learn from Christ and others.